Ignition Inc., a small family business in Atlanta, has organized six Olympic torch relays since 1998, including this year’s 106-day prelude to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games,
the
Wall Street Journal
reported.
Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, told the
Journal
the company’s advantage was its ability to develop and manage a part-time workforce.
Ignition’s co-founder, Susan McWhorter Driscoll, was a marketing director at Coca-Cola and directed its first sponsorship of a torch relay for Atlanta’s 1996 Games. A year later, she and husband Mark Driscoll founded Ignition to host future sporting events, eventually turning over day-to-day operations in 2007 over to their nephew, Mike Hersom, who is Ignition’s president, and his wife, Cindy-Ann Hersom, who serves as Ignition’s chief marketing officer.
The company’s “main task is to engineer a party-like atmosphere throughout the communities that the torch travels,” the
Journal
reported. (Source:
Wall Street Journal,
Nov. 3, 2009.)
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